Idol, Deduced from Ideal? Rule of Law, Universalization, Degradation

Abstract

The Rule of Law idea is defined worldwide by one single legal culture today, the one in which declaration of what the law is is done ex post facto (as in English common law) or in the case of political pragmatism which relocates legal innovation from elected representative bodies to the administration of justice (as in the USA). Moreover, Rule of Law used as a politicalcatchword results in ideocratic idealisation. Rule of Law, embodying instrumental value (even if international pressure groups fundamentalise it), represents a particular culture in the play of hic et nunc challenges and responses (even if globalism universalises it). Developed under varied conditions particular to place and time, it cannot be more than a series of living cultures of the countries concerned, based on a historically evolving civilising and humanising ideal. Law as an aggregate of values to be defended equally faces values that conflict with one another in dailyenforcement, crying for weighing and balancing in a compromise solution at most. Far from standing for all-or-nothing absolutism, onesidedness or homogenisation – idolising legal certainty (as the Hungarian Constitutional Court did) or subjecting government action to judicial or human rights control – may sacrifice justice, with popular support and raison d’être vanishing. Moreover, fetishising its own homogeneity may distort the merits it claims to serve. A globalising judgeocracy tries to monopolise the worldwide learning process while isolating local developments from theirnatural context, in order to enforce its own creation. After all, the quest for those who can master the law is crucial in assessing the interventionism of either international agencies or the European Union in local issues under the aegis of the Rule of Law.